PLEASE READ BOTH SECTIONS OF THIS ITEM. HERE IS SOMEONE COMPLETELY IN SYNC WITH OUR GOALS.

A
cop for 27 years, Wes Fung has seen a lot of things. But there’s one
incident that he distinctly recalls. It concerns a young man in
Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. He lost his battle against addiction and
mental illness.

He hanged himself.

“I remember we cut him down, and as I was helping bring his body down, it felt hard, cold—like a piece of wood,” Fung told the Georgia Straight. “I’m thinking, ‘My daughters aren’t much younger than this boy here.’ ”

Fung said it was this man’s despair that partly explains why he’s now talking publicly about his thoughts regarding the neighbourhood, like his idea of forcing addicts to get treatment.

Fung is the Vancouver Police Department’s liaison officer in
Chinatown and Gastown, a post he has held since 2009. Inside his office
at a community policing centre on Keefer Street, the 50-year-old
constable vented his frustration over the “hypocrisy” about the Downtown
Eastside.

“For mainstream society, as long as the ‘garbage’ is centralized
down here, not in my back yard, not in Kits, not in Shaughnessy, or
wherever else, no one cares,” the Vancouver-born police officer said.
“So there’s no will to really do what it takes to actually solve the
problems down here.”

He suggested that the province should amend its Mental Health Act
to allow police to apprehend drug users deemed a threat to themselves
and others. They could then be taken to rehabilitation centres and also
provided with after-treatment supports such as transition housing and
counselling programs.

“People say that unless someone wants to get clean, you can’t
force them,” Fung said. “We try to apply logic to an illogical act.
Anybody who is of a sane mind, would they want to be addicted? No! Even
the addicted don’t want to be addicted. These people, they’re so
obsessed at trying to chase after the next fix. Common sense doesn’t
apply. So sometimes the government has to step in as the big brother to
force treatment on them.”

He’s not a fan of harm reduction, which involves practices like giving out clean needles and crack pipes.
“I call it harm reproduction,” Fung said. “I understand the
rationale of harm reduction, because on a short-term basis, you know,
you want to stop the spread of disease and stop people from overdosing
on drugs. But, unfortunately, all you’re doing is enabling the status
quo…You’re only prolonging the misery.”

“The whole point is getting them [addicts] to somebody who can do
something, whether you commit them or send them to a place where they
can be properly triaged,” Jang, a UBC professor of psychiatry, told the
Straight in a phone interview.

That’s why the VPD has been calling for an urgent-response centre
where officers can drop off people with addictions and mental-health
issues, according to Jang. He noted that health authorities and many
nonprofits support this measure.

He acknowledged that forced treatment will invite questions about
civil liberties. “However, again, it’s a definition of addiction,” Jang
said. “Are they [addicts] able to make a judgment?”

Dr. Evan Wood is an expert on issues related to addiction. He’s a
principal investigator with the Urban Health Research Initiative, a
program of the B.C. Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS.

“I wholeheartedly agree we need to dramatically expand access to addiction treatment,” Wood told the Straight
in a phone interview. “But we clearly need to ensure we are investing
limited tax dollars into evidence-based interventions rather than
approaches that are proven ineffective and increasingly being condemned
by international bodies.”

Wood was referring to a joint statement made by 12 United Nations
entities in March against compulsory drug detention and rehabilitation.
“The deprivation of liberty without due process is an unacceptable
violation of internationally recognised human-rights standards,” the
statement reads in part.
Downtown Eastside activist Ann Livingston doesn’t buy Fung’s
idea. The long-time volunteer with the Vancouver Area Network of Drug
Users noted that there aren’t sufficient spaces for people who want to
go in for treatment in the first place.

“If the only way you can get to treatment is to get arrested
because there simply isn’t enough voluntary treatment anyway, that is
bizarre,” Livingston told the Straight by phone.

Fung admitted that some people might be offended by his ideas, but he said his goal is to provoke a discussion.

He even suggested that society is “complicit” about the cycle of
addiction in the Downtown Eastside. “We have a guilty conscience,” he
said. “Why do you think so many people come down here during Christmas
to give out sandwiches to all the poor homeless? They’re not making
their lives any better, but they’re making themselves feel better. So
who are you helping? You or them?”

Const. Wes Fung: The Downtown Eastside show

Publish Date: June 28, 2012

One reason for the continuing tragedy that is the Downtown Eastside is
because we don’t care enough to find truly meaningful solutions. Our
community has allowed the scourge of drug addiction and mental illness
to be socially and politically palatable because no one wants to
acknowledge the truth: that as long as the society’s “garbage” is down
there and NIMBY, it’s tolerable.

We appease our guilt by hosting extravagant charity fundraisers and give
money to panhandlers, and some will even make the trek into the
neighbourhood during Christmas time to give out free food and clothing.
These acts of goodwill are well intentioned but misguided, doing nothing
to address the problems in the Downtown Eastside but instead enabling
the status quo. It’s false compassion: we fool ourselves into believing
our deeds are doing some good, but the primary motive is to cleanse our
conscience.

The citizens residing in the neighbourhood are at times viewed as circus
sideshow freaks. Families from all over the Lower Mainland will dare to
drive into the area to show their kids what will happen if they use
drugs. The people of the DTES are probably the most photographed,
interviewed, and filmed to ostensibly bring more focus to their plight.
The writers, photographers, filmmakers, and politicians go on to reap
their rewards of recognition while the subjects of their work are once
again relegated to mere footnotes, left to wallow in wretched obscurity
until the arrival of the next hack or politico.

There is also a financial motive for the ongoing crisis. There are
numerous institutions with their respective bureaucracies competing for
limited government funding to deliver a variety of social services to
the residents. It has been suggested that about one million dollars a
day is expended, that much of it is wasted because of bureaucratic
redundancies and a lack of accountability. Though this may be somewhat
exaggerated, it is evident a lot of money is poured into the community
as though it were a third world country. Throwing money at problems
without the necessary checks and balances make any initiatives
vulnerable to inefficiencies and corruption.

This creates a catch-22 situation whereby all these services are created
to seemingly help the people, but by doing so we foster a prey/predator
culture of dealers-addicts, pimps-prostitutes, sociopaths, and a cycle
of violence where today’s victim is tomorrow’s offender. An atmosphere
of entitlement develops because the boundaries defining social etiquette
are blurred. Behaviours and actions deemed inappropriate in “normal”
neighbourhoods are excused because the actors suffer from varying
degrees of addiction and mental illness. The lack of consequences
emboldens those who are not drug addicted nor mentally ill but feed on
those that are.

This dysfunctional dynamic is used to justify the survival of all the
bureaucracies, and society buys into it because it’s an easy cop out.
The more programs and treatment centres that open the more we delude
ourselves into believing it’s the best fix under hopeless circumstances.

Because these programs are centralized in the DTES, it’s very easy to be
drawn into the maelstrom but almost impossible to leave due to the
dearth of support elsewhere. Establishing treatment centres in the
neighbourhood is akin to holding AA meetings in liquor stores. It’s
doomed to failure when one has to fight temptation to navigate around
the phalanx of luring dealers skulking nearby on a daily basis. Truth
is, many of the dealers are gang affiliated, live in the suburbs, and
are from middle-class backgrounds as are many of their customers. They
make regular forays into the DTES to supply and lord over their
subsistence-level minions who do the street-level transactions and run
the risk of arrest.

Harm reduction strategies of providing free needles and crack-pipes to
curb the spread of disease and overdose deaths are an understandable
knee jerk response to the misery but do very little to address the
problem in the long term. It will take a tough approach to deal with an
ugly situation.
The concept of forced treatment is intensely controversial because it
means the suspension of an individual’s right of choice, the foundation
of democracy. There is also the argument that a person has to make their
own decision to get clean and any coercive methods to compel treatment
will fail. This premise is based on the notion a “junkie” is still able
to make rational choices. We try to apply logic to an illogical act when
in reality, the user is so thoroughly consumed with seeking their next
fix that common sense does not apply.

This is not to suggest forced treatment is a panacea for all the ills
haunting the DTES, because there are no perfect solutions—some people
are beyond help and will die. However, if carried out methodically and
with compassion, a person has a better chance to reclaim their dignity
and self-respect, to give back rather than take. Forced treatment offers
the one thing harm “reproduction” cannot—hope.

Amend the Mental Health Act to include addiction and divert some of the
money flowing into the DTES into building medical centres located away
from the area and staffed by qualified personnel. Instead of
administering narcotic substitutes, the patient goes “cold turkey” and
is closely monitored.

Next is a psychological assessment for mental fitness to determine the
appropriate follow-up measures that include counseling, nutrition and
exercise, hygiene, education upgrade, work force re-entry, and family
participation.

Individuals deemed profoundly unstable and a safety threat would be
transferred to an institution like Riverview for a more structured
environment. Sadly, for many it is a life sentence. Those making good
progress would earn the privilege of graduating to transition homes to
continue their re-integration into the community. The houses would be
located in neighbourhoods throughout Greater Vancouver and the
neighbours would be made aware of the initiative, the entire process
transparent.

Ideally, forced treatment and transition homes would be accepted as
meaningful solutions to deal with addiction and mental health issues in
the Downtown Eastside. In reality, the idea alone would cause such
public uproar that no politician would dare champion the cause.

Compounding the problem are the self-proclaimed advocates for the
marginalized whose sole purpose is to perpetuate the veil of suspicion
and mistrust of the police. They descend into the DTES and cloak their
agenda in self-righteous propaganda to brainwash the residents into
believing they are the true defenders, but the only thing being defended
is the status quo and, therefore, their relevance. Many of these groups
and individuals know the “hot potato” issues in the DTES and use them
as political launching pads to polarize the citizenry, reinforcing an
“us versus them” mentality. Public pandering and social guilt has given
these people too loud a voice and like Dr. Frankenstein, we have come to
fear our own creation. Before riding too high on our moral horse we
should all take a hard look in the mirror, though we may not like the
image because the problem and the solution is staring right back at us.

Addendum

Contrary to public perception not everyone in the DTES is drug addicted,
mentally ill, or a dangerous felon. Having worked the area for the past
three years I have come to know many of the long-time residents. There
are a lot of good people who are passionate about the neighbourhood
because it’s home. Their frustration is palpable because they know the
community can be much more than what it is. I can also sense the
vibrancy returning: the new funky shops and eateries opening up and the
cautious optimism of the people moving back into the area.

There are those who believe this “gentrification” of the DTES is a
threat to the disadvantaged, low-income residents: that the resulting
rise in property values would make rents unaffordable thereby throwing
these people onto the streets.

I believe if the government were to adopt a more assertive tact to deal
with the fiscal inefficiencies and redundancies, the money could be
redirected to attract reputable landlords and building owners with fair
subsidies relative to property tax increases. This would be an incentive
to provide a higher standard of housing for low-income residents who
must earn the privilege of living in the upgraded homes.

I also believe that if people are surrounded by positive stimuli they
will be inspired to try harder to be better, call it the “Broken Window
Theory” of human behaviour. For far too long, the DTES has been
enveloped in a smothering cloud of negativity, but the shroud is slowly
lifting. This renaissance is being lead by new entrepreneurs,
developers, and young families who are aware of the challenges faced by
the residents and want their participation to help make the
neighbourhood a better place.

These two groups can coexist quite comfortably, but much of this is
predicated on the political courage that will be required to make
difficult decisions to deal with the problems. Until that happens, the
present situation will ensure job security for a lot of folks—cops
included.

Const. Wes Fung is a Chinatown-Gastown neighbourhood police officer
with the Vancouver Police Department. Fung has been a member of the
department for 27 years, serving as the liaison for several SRO hotels
in the Downtown Eastside over the past three years. The opinions
expressed in this article are the writer’s and do not represent the
views of the department.

Thursday, June 21, 2012

You might also be encouraged by these two comments that were emailed to me:

Comments: Re: Article “Can David Berner reduce Harm Reduction”

Addiction is Hell and Harm Reduction is an invitation to extend your stay in that Hell

I am familiar with that hell and I am incredibly grateful that my family
and my workplace did not believe in “harm reduction” or I would not be
writing this letter today. Many on the east side do not have families or
workplaces to pressure them into treatment but funding a guaranteed
hell is no answer when that money could go to providing greater access
to detox and treatment.
Harm reduction uses the taxpayer’s money to keep the addict sick!! This
method also perpetuates the notion that the addict doesn’t need to
change – but we do!! I had blamed those around me for my own addiction
and all the problems that came with it – if everyone else would change
my life would be fine! Maybe they should have reduced the speed limits
on my street to protect me when I was in addiction!!
To offer the addict anything but the truth is a disservice to him and
robs him of the hope of recovery. The truth is that he is gravely ill
and there is no “middle of the road” solution. Treatment Centers or
facilities that offer a spiritual answer help an addict to take
responsibility for where he is while offering him a doorway out of hell
to a life that is incredibly more wonderful than he could ever imagine.

Barb R

* * *

Comments: I just read the article,"McMartin: Can David Berner reduce
harm reduction?" posted in the Vancouver Sun. I couldn't agree with you
more, David.
It's so true that, "politicians and academics haven’t been grounded in the dirty practicalities of addiction".
I was once brainwashed and seduced by the arguments for 'Harm Reduction'
and then I started working in the DTES. It wasn't long before I
realized Harm Reduction didn't work and that all we were doing was
helping people stay stuck.
I soon put it together that there were organizations out there that
supported Harm Reduction because if people were all of a sudden getting
clean, they would be out of business. And that is exactly what Harm
Reduction has become: a business. It's starting to make me sick.
Ironically, this article came out just as I was preaching to others about how futile Harm Reduction is.

As reported across the country in the last few hours, our leading bureaucrat has thrown all good sense out the window.

We hope that one day he will leave his office and meet the parents, partners, friends and family members of the ecstasy-afflicted. Then, he might want to drop by the many prevention and treatment programs that are on the front lines of this madness every day - that includes weekends and evenings.

Following are comments from Al Arsenault and Toby Hinton of the Odd Squad:

Yah, prohibition does all the harm...that's why
there were no drug problems in the late 1800's when everything was legal...the
Narcotics Control Act was passed because it was an ideal world of all drug
legalization...Al

Does not surprise me at all. When
Through A Blue Lens came out, he went on TV and bemoaned that this type of
programming did nothing for education. When we talked to him about this later,
he admitted he had not even watched it before giving his interview. He is
pro-legalization for everything, and why he is our prov. health officer is
beyond me. MDMA - even in its pure form - is linked to depression/seratonin
depletion/and other developmental issues.

Toby

We welcome your comments. From this writer's point of view, the Harm Reduction movement and philosophy have found a great ally in Dr. Kendall and the result is policy that makes the word "irresponsible" seem inadequate.

Sunday, June 10, 2012

Last Thursday, about 900 people joined Al Arsenault and his colleagues to celebrate 15 years of amazing Prevention work from the Odd Squad. The event was in the huge harbor-facing West ballroom at the Convention Centre and people from every walk of life were there. To Al and his fellow police officers and his Board and support team and all the folks who stand behind their work, major thanks and congratulations for keeping the lights on!

The video below - "What the Odd Squad Does" - says it all.

* * *

Last month, Brenda Plant and her team held an equally impressive 30th celebration of Turning Point at the Four Seasons Hotel with special guest speaker, Rob Lowe. That's 30 years of taking in addicted men and women and graduating clean and sober citizens. For a wonderful evening and for their fantastic Treatment & Recovery work, also hearty thanks & congratulations.

Wednesday, June 6, 2012

On Saturday, June 2nd, we posted a marvelous piece from the South Delta Leader on the Little House Society's work.

Today, we are pleased to share with you this note from Jim and to offer our congratulations to a colleague who has devoted a life to prevention and recovery work with great results.

To my Shetland Island Clan and other dear friends, a few weeks ago I
received a heart touching recognition from our provincial government in
the form of the Rick Hansen 25th Anniversary Man in Motion Award. It
brought me to tears for not once would I have ever expected this, nor
even knew of the consideration. I have long held deep respect for Rick
Hansen and some 18 years ago my son's and I had the opportunity to have
dinner with Rick as he was the closing speaker at a conference on
Substance Abuse, the Workplace and the Family. I was Chair of the
conference that year and one of the great moments was our time with Rick
Hansen.

As you I hope are now aware our two years of
work on building the concept of a strong community education society
and a Little House to go along with it will hit a significant milestone
this Sunday with our Grand Opening of our new multi-purpose community
education, training and meeting centre. Our new video will soon be
completed and I will forward that to you when completed.

I thank you from the depth of my heart for your encouragement, support and prayers.

Saturday, June 2, 2012

Getting unhooked from a life of addiction

The
exit doors of the hospital in Regina, Saskatchewan swung open and the
rush of sub zero winter air pouring into the building produced a
chilling and defining moment for Susan.
Her drug dealer boyfriend was in police custody on counterfeiting charges.
She was a longtime addict.
And now, far from her home in Tsawwassen, the then 18-year-old had nowhere to go.
What was her next step?
Embarking on the long road to getting clean and sober was the answer.
Susan—not
her real name, like the others in this story who asked for
anonymity—knew the only way to break the self-destructive cycle of
addiction was to change her life completely.
Cast off the drug and alcohol use. Get back to her family. And create a purpose in life.
It's a fairly similar story for three other local 20-something addicts who have managed to a make change for the better.
And
with the grand opening of the rebuilt Little House Society facility on
June 10 in Tsawwassen they are keen to tell how they got unhooked from
addiction traveled down the road to recovery.
The Little
House Society is billed as a community-based nonprofit organization
dedicated to promoting and advancing education related to substance use,
abuse, and addiction, and abstinence-based recovery from addiction. Its
building on 12th Ave. adjacent to Brandrith Park, a small residential
structure, fell victim to arson in 2009, and with the community's
assistance it has been re-established.

The road to addiction
The
original Little House was a source of help during Susan's recovery, now
27, who moved to Tsawwassen from Coquitlam when she was 14. She had
already experimented with drugs—marijuana—at the age of 12. And by the
age of 15 was addicted to meth amphetamines.
"To tell you
you the truth, I came here as a new person to the community and the
group of friends who accepted me experimented with drugs," she says.
"There isn't a lot for young people to do out here that's not sports.
So, free time is spent experimenting with drugs."
At first she said declined the invitations, but eventually gave in.
"It was a guy. He was more persuasive and I thought if I do it (drugs) with him, he'll like me more," Susan says.
In Grade 11 she was kicked out of high school in Tsawwassen and sent to an alternate program.
By the end of Grade 12 she was expelled from the alternate program.
Delving deeper into the drug culture Susan started associating with criminals.
"It's just part of that world," Susan says. "And I got in trouble with the law."
That was in Regina and the moment when she knew things had to change.
For
Henry, it started with drinking at the age of 15. It was a way for the
Ladner resident to break down the barriers of insecurity to become the
fun-loving, focus of attention person he desperately wanted to be.
"After
my first time drinking I spent the night in the hospital," says Henry,
now 21. "I had to get my stomach pumped because I drank too much. And it
went downhill from there."
As he got older Henry turned to harder drugs such as cocaine.
In Grade 12 he became disconnected from family and friends in preference for those with whom he was using drugs.
"I've
always had a fear of social situations." he says. "I've always been a
nervous person and my way to deal it was to take myself out of the
equation and replace it with the effects of a drug like cocaine which I
used to make myself the life of a party."
After a while
that wasn't enough to break free from the shackles of his anxieties and
Henry graduated to opiates and a preference for solitude.
"It was just me, my video games and my drugs," he says.
Not
long after graduating from high school Henry left home for college on
Vancouver Island at age 19. A change in geography was maybe a way out,
he thought.
"I had a burst of motivation for the first
month, then I crashed. I found a way to get drugs, drank by myself and
stopped going to school altogether for two semesters," he says. "I went
farther and farther into the depths of addiction because I didn't have
anyone to remind me where I was going. I was truly on my own. And once I
was left to my own devices it was well and truly over."
But
while he recognized the downward spiral it took a bad experience while
consuming halucenogenic mushrooms to present Henry with a moment of
clarity to fully understand the position he was in and to change the
direction his life was heading.
"I suddenly saw I wasn't the grandiose, good looking, athletic guy I thought I was. It was all an illusion."
He
called his mother in the middle of the night and said he needed to come
home and his parents, who had always been supportive through all his
trials, accepted his return.
Henry came home with the
intent to get clean, but experienced relapses that included cocaine use
to get himself up for the sports team he belonged to.
But
when the drugs failed to deliver the desired results it took a call from
a close friend, Colin, a fellow addict and his former drug dealer in
high school, to get him pointed in the right direction in a treatment
program in New Westminster.
"I don't know what I was thinking walking up to the place, but it just felt right and was something I had to do," Henry says.
Seeing his friend Colin there, looking healthier than he'd seen him in years, inspired Henry to make the effort to stop using.
Colin, also 21, says he felt compelled to help Henry get clean.
Colin's
story was similar to his friend's—drinking alcohol at an early age to
heal the emptiness and sadness he felt inside. Then he graduated to
increasingly more potent drugs—much of them pilfered from his family's
medicine cabinet.
By the time he was in Grade 10 Colin was dealing drugs, and cocaine and oxycontin use was a regular habit.
"The opiates like oxycontin became my drug of choice," he says. "It made me feel so good."
His
addiction to the drug became so ingrained that following an accident at
work where he cut his knee badly, all Colin could think of was being
able to get as much pain medication as possible from his doctor.
"At the hospital I pretended to be in severe pain and played that off for months."
After completing Grade 12 Coiln started using heroin on a daily basis.
"I
wasn't working. I was like a homeless junkie. I didn't live on the
streets. I was on my friend's couch. I was kicked out of my parents'
house. No one would hire me. All I did each day was use heroin and
cocaine," he says.
Knowing he was going nowhere in life Colin attempted treatment for his addiction. The first try failed.
Colin returned home and promptly relapsed.
That happened mainly because Colin says he never fully accepted he was an addict.
"I
always told myself that I could drink on the weekends, and life would
be good if I could only do the odd hit (drug use) here or there."

Going backwards
Relapse
for those in the 20-something demographic who move back to the family
home is prevalent, says Jim Stimson, president of the Little House
Society who is working on bringing together those like Susan, Henry and
Colin for regular support group meetings.
"The
highest rate of relapse for young adults is when they return to live
with one or both parents," Stimson says, "especially if the parents
have not done any recovery themselves. Because the addiction compulsion
is not gone. It's just been treated. So, what happens is that the
illness is a living entity that doesn't want you to really quit. And
that sets you up to create conflict. And there's no better place to
create that conflict than in the home with those who you are closest to.
And bingo, the relapses start happening.
"You gotta stay
out of slippery places," Stimson said. "You don't want them (recovering
addicts) in places where's there's constant chaos and disagreement."
Those parents who buy into the education side of addiction more likely to have their children succeed in treatment.
Colin's family did and last month he celebrated his first anniversary of being clean.
It's been five years clean and sober for Jane.
Her
journey through addiction started with struggling to gain acceptance in
school, "and l was looking for a different way to cope than other
people," says the 23-year-old single mom, adding the birth of her son is
what made her change.
"I got into drug debts, health
problems and was homeless, but none of that scared me or shocked my
world. It was me being pregnant with my son that changed things. It
changed my aspect on life."
Part of that was the challenge
set out to her by a friend who said the best way to ensure she kept her
child after he was born was to immediately go clean. And that meant
throwing out her current supply of drugs.
"I really knew
something was wrong with my life when I started crying over the fact of
crushed (discarded) dope," she says laughing.
But she did it—went clean for a week. And that stretched to a month, then five months.
"I
managed that because my son also filled something I'd been searching
for," she says. "Whenever I went to treatment I was told that I had to
be doing this for myself, not someone else. But that wasn't good enough
because I didn't care if I lived or died at that point. For me, using
drugs was a slow process of committing suicide, which I was committed
to."
She says that in her mind she never believed in the unconditional love from her parents.
"I
always felt that I didn't live up to their standards of what a daughter
should be, so when I found out I was pregnant I finally got what I was
looking for—unconditional love."

New lives with purpose
Today,
Susan, Henry, Colin and Jane have lives with a purpose—ones they
believe other addicts can attain with the assistance of programs in
facilities such as The Little House.
Susan completed a
degree in criminology and aspires to be a probation officer. Henry and
Colin have full time jobs they enjoy. And Jane wants to help other
addicts.
"When I decided to get clean not even a brick had
been laid on the Little House foundation. But I think with something
like that in the community there's no way of predicting what it's going
to do, but the potential is there for lives to be saved and families to
be happy," Colin says. "I never learned anything about what addiction
was when I was young. I learned that drugs were bad. But with this here
there's the chance for people to understand what addiction means."
"Now
that it's (The Little House) back in the community I think it will be
well utilized because people will realize that it's a safe place to go
to get the resources they need to help their own family," Jane says.
For more information about The Little House Society visit littlehousesociety.ca.

Endorsement

"All treatment centres in B.C. should get involved and support the Drug Prevention Network. As one collective voice we need to send the message that treatment works and it saves lives. There are recovery houses, treatment centers, private, government funded, long term, short term, detox, therapeutic communities etc. Let's help support prevention and help educate the public."